Reincarnated as a mana core

Endless Quests

There are some Quests you just can’t finish for some reason or the other. These are some of the most rare and most rewarding Quests one can get. Those who are known to have one such Quest are always a target for the greedy and maleficent. Unknown to most, each person has to get access to endless Quests in their own unique way and they can’t be given on.

 

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POV Arthur

Arthur had been a street kid for as nearly as long as he could remember. His mother had never truly recovered from his birth and died because of that when he was 4.

His father blamed him for everything that had happened. He was a curse and his father treated him accordingly.

It never really showed in the beginning, but the more time passed the worse it got for Arthur. At the age of 8 he had been thrown on the street. After that it actually got better for him because he didn’t get random beatings anymore.

That didn’t mean he didn’t get any beatings at all, quite on the contrary, but all these he could avoid unlike the ones by his father.

It was difficult at the beginning and Arthur got really scrawny, but he slowly learned to get by on the streets. He did so mostly by stealing and begging on the streets. His begging was really effective as his appearance was pitiful.

Was it a fun life?

No, definitely not. Especially once he started to understand the workings of the darker side of society. He had tried to sell drugs without belonging to one of the local gangs. It had been a very bad idea followed by a very bad day that forced him into one of the gangs.

At ten he officially became a drug dealer, at least as officially as a drug dealer selling illegal stuff was. The first thing he learned in his new job was how to discern who was a possible client and who was not.

The second thing he learned was how to run away from the cops and the third thing was english. For some reason you could sell stuff for more to tourists and Arthur thoroughly abused that.

Since he was 12 he always carried at least a knife with him, but he was much more comfortable having some kind of gun on him. He already knew how to defend himself, so that wasn’t much of an issue. 

At the age of 14 he started learning how to read. It just made things so much easier, even though it took him nearly 2 years to get somewhat good.

Besides living, he now had two hobbies. The first one was weapons. Most of his spare money he put into different kinds of guns, rifles and ammunition. He managed to get 7 of them before he turned 18, the things were just expansive as hell.

Arthur’s second hobby was reading. He liked it a lot, because it was so different from his life and a way to accompany someone else through their life without being there.

Really he hadn’t lived a good life so far, but it wasn’t all that bad either. He might not live a long life, but Arthur would make sure he had lived it to the fullest.

Or it had been what Argul thought until all of humanity got teleported to a different planet 4 months ago.

He had been in the middle of cleaning and attending to his collection of firearms, only to appear in a military encampment together with a lot of random soldiers and civilians.

It had been awkward as fuck, espacially since the soldiers all belonged to different countries and all the people around him were screaming. Nobody had a clue what was going on, but somehow he had gotten a lot of attention.

He couldn’t exactly put his finger on the reason. Maybe it was because of his small height of about 160 cm or his blond hair. It could have also been his devilish handsome looks and muscular build. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because there was an 18 year old carrying 7 functioning and loaded firearms as well as ammunition belts on himself in the middle of a group of confused and scared people. Just maybe.

Anyways, as far as first impressions went, this one was a bit awkward, but luckily lost in the following chaos. Arthur did not think much about their current situation, he could think about it once he and his belongings were safe. He knew how to act and always acted fast, which in this case enabled him to find a place to hide his weapons at.

The military guys only acted a bit slower than Arthur and countries did not matter for the time being until the people were safe. Some kind of order was established in less than three days and people got work assigned to them based on their skills. 

He had earned himself a few raised eyebrows when he told them his skills were drugs and guns. They tested him afterwards and after a bit of military education he was now a scout.

Their situation was really weird. The military camp as Arthur had called it before was more of a city and there were a lot of people here. The weirdest part though was the city itself. It looked like somebody had taken anything human and dumped it somewhere else. The houses and streets were a random mess, pets and animals were loitering around and you could find random bits of technology and tools everywhere. Hell there was even food besides the animals here.

That the military managed to sort all this out in about two days was really impressive in his opinion. Though they would have to live with the randomly placed houses for now.

After having fortified their location they started to scout their surroundings. They did not use all the vehicles to do that. Their city had no supply of fuel or anything really except electricity, so using their guns and cars and tanks would be stupid. People were really thankful for the solar panels, even if they only had a restricted amount of power per person to use.

Back to the scouting, Arthur made it a habit to always have his weapons with him, even if they were heavy as hell.

They made contact with different villages, towns and cities in the following weeks. To describe the situation, Arthur had been lucky. Not all the settlements had a military presence like theirs and a lot of the places had seen heavy fighting.

They didn’t take in any refugees, much to the scorn of some people who for some reason wanted to thin their supplies, but sent relief squads here and there and started to establish an order.

Doing this was actually easier with the places where the military was present. They still had no idea what was going on, so they set their squarrels aside for now.

Of course there were people who wanted more power and tried to use this situation, but Arthur could tell you that a gun to the head solved these problems really fast. He had made the experience himself as a kid.

It had now been nearly four months and Arthur and the scout team he was a part of were currently in some kind of birch forest. It was one of the most southern regions they currently knew of and they had yet to find towns or cities in this direction.

They were moving at a slow jog and slowly created a crude map of the forest. Around noon they took a break to restore some stamina. 

Arthur felt something change in the air and not just the air, the whole forest around them had gone silent for a moment. In these few seconds you could only hear the rustling of the trees.

His instincts screamed at him. Something was about to happen and it would be bad. The animals became active again as if nothing ever happened. Arthur, though, was still on edge and grabbed his sports bag that held his firearms. 

He slowly opened it and took out one of his rifles. He put his arm through the sling and let the rifle hang there limbly as he slowly equipped all his other stuff. Once he had his four pistols holstered he put his army knives in his mouth and looked around.

His actions hadn’t gone unnoticed and the rest of his team was staring wide eyed at him. They had suspected him carrying around some weapons, but not four pistols, two rifles and a sniper rifle. They had no idea how he even got the last one.

Arthur eyed them warily as they gripped their own weapons ready for anything, even him to attack them. He seemed to be the only one who felt something weird in the air.

He suddenly had a feeling as if something was invading him, as if thousands of small insects were crawling under his skin and shuddered. His five team mates all fell to the ground screaming and writhing in agony. Arthur's grip tightened a lot around the hold of the rifle he was currently holding. A screen appeared before him.

Integration successful. Congratulations, you have been successfully connected to the system. You can now access your status. Be aware that any beings under the influence of any universe except the Lotusriver universe are likely going to call you a nice snack after the integration. May you rise and reach your goals!

Arthur just took a glance at the thing, but the only thing he took notice of was universe, integration and him being a snack. He looked at his team and established a new definition of terrified. 

Their bodies were growing so fast and in such absurd ways that their skin cracked before something new grew from there. In seconds they were nothing more than piles of cancer growths and then started to take different forms.

Arthur buckled over to his left and puked. That sight had been horrifying, disgusting and repulsive.

What had been his former teammates started to change a bit slower. Legs grew and tentacles formed. A multitude of black eyes and terrible mouths with teeth designed to rip out the flesh of anything living opened.

Arthur looked up and froze for a split second before his instincts took over and he started to slowly walk backwards, trying to get some distance between himself and the abominations. 

He had been terrified before, but now he was horrified. So much in fact that his body was shaking uncontrollable and he had pissed himself. This scene would follow him for all of his life, he was sure and the only reason he hadn’t screamed until now was the absolute fear he was feeling.

The things started to move and stand up while Arthur was still slowly backing away. Suddenly all of their eyes focused on him and you could tell because they tugged the flesh they were embedded in in his direction. His breath caught and his heart missed a beat.

Then they screamed the worst scream Arthur had ever heard. It felt like his nails were rolling upwards and all his hairs stood straight. It was worse than someone scratching a chalkboard with their fingernails. He shuddered through all his shaking.

The abominations suddenly took off on a run and Arthur pulled his trigger in shock. His fire was focused on one of the things, but it refused to die. He turned around and ran as fast as he could, which was not fast enough because they were faster than him.

While still running he turned half around and shot again, but on the fourth shot his rifle became hot. That was definitely not supposed to happen. Not thinking about it he cut through the string that held the rifle on his body with his knife and threw the thing behind him.

Arthur turned his back fully to them and tried to run faster. One of the abominations stepped on his rifle and exploded, which should also not have happened.

Arthur was thrown five meters by the shock wave and rolled on the ground for another two before his back painfully impacted a tree. The metal of all his firearms got pressed against his body painfully and he would likely be bruised to oblivion if he survived this. Everything became fuzzy for a second and his ears were ringing. “Fuck!”

He turned around and looked at the impact round. There was a small crater, but somehow nothing was on fire. The trees nearby were splintered and a random tentacle was wriggling on the ground. Everything smelled of gunpowder, so intense in fact Arthur could smell nothing else. That was also not normal. The ringing in his ears was lessening.

The abomination that had stepped on the rifle was hanging limbly from a branch it had been impaled on a few meters in the air. Blood was slowly dropping to the ground. Relieve spread through Arthur. “Dead.” He did not have enough mental capacity to say more right now.

He looked around for the other four. The one he had shot first had left a trail of blood behind and was slowly dragging itself in his direction, but would likely die before it reached him. The other three were nearly unharmed though and in the process of standing up again, but never leaving Arthur out of their eyes. “Fuck! Fuckedy fucking fuck! Shit hell fuck!” He had no idea what was going on, but cursing helped him to clear his head.

He stood up as fast as he could and started to run again, the abominations not far behind him. His left leg hurt like hell, but not enough for it to be something serious so he tried to ignore it. Arthur noticed that he had lost his knife and his second rifle and screamed in frustration. “Fuuuck!” He just wanted to survive damn it!

He took one of his pistols shot once and the damn thing got hot again. Arthur threw it at the abominations again, but they had learned and a tentacle slapped the firearm away. It exploded harmlessly somewhere in the forest, again without setting anything on fire.

Something made his weapons unreliable and it did not spell good for him. Arthur got a bit more desperate and took the other two of his guns. He focused his fire on the abomination that was nearest to him, missing three times and getting in 5 hits. His guns were overheating again so he let them drop. This way the monsters couldn’t kick them away like a baseball.

The guns exploded, for whatever reason they were even doing that, between the first and the second nearest abominations.

The result was good and bad. Good because the second thing didn’t have legs anymore and had slammed directly in the third one throwing them way off, bad because the first abomination was now even nearer to Arthur still running after him, even though half of its back was missing and it was bleeding all over the place.

Arthur cursed. The sniper was still on his back, but it was useless in this situation. He gripped his last pistol and shot once at the nearest tentacle thing.

It gurgled, blood came out of all of its mouths which it had a lot of and it flopped over not moving anymore.

Arthur sighed. He was out of breath and his feet were hurting like hell, so he slowed down a little bit. He looked at the last abomination and witnessed it standing up again. He also noticed that one of its tentacles had been ripped in half and knew where the other half was.

He shot it once, hit and turned around again only to slamm with his left shoulder into a tree at nearly full speed. Arthur made a pirouette and fell over. He managed to catch himself with a roll and stood up again. The thing screamed.

Arthur’s shoulder and arm hurt like hell and his shoulder was most likely dislocated. He wheezed in pain, turned around and shot the abomination again. Damn fucker!

The pistol got hot again and Arthur despaired a bit more. He let it fall to the ground and now had only his sniper left. In the worst case he would need to use it as a club.

Arthur ran around another birch and tripped over a root he hadn’t seen. He was so shocked by the stupidity of this mistake and likely his following death, that he didn’t manage to catch himself with his right hand. He closed his eyes  before his head slammed into the ground and he lost consciousness.